The Earth will go on... without us.

I've gotten flak for my stances on the environment. One thing I hear a lot is, Why worry? The earth has been through many disasters. If we cause another one, it'll recover. Animals go extinct, others evolve. So why bother?

I bother because I'd like humans to be able to continue on this planet. Yes, the earth will go on, evolution will continue. But if we poison, heat up, drain all the potable water, and screw up the ecology enough that the weather turns apocalyptic, humans won't be part of that earth or that evolution. What environmentalists are trying to save the earth for, is people.

Trouble is, there's no profit in saving the environment. Tiger skins and other parts, elephant tusks, and the land the tigers and elephants need to live on is all too valuable. So we use  it up. The oil companies can't figure out how to make obscene amounts of money on renewable energy sources, so they don't fund the research and they spread lies about it. Meanwhile they're fracking the daylights out of every possible source. Here in New Mexico, impoverished farmers are selling their fresh water to frackers. Like we've got such an excess of potable water in this desert state. And when it's all poisoned - make no mistake, fracking poisons water - there'll be no water left to drink.

At least, not cheap water. Want to pay for water at the same prices as gasoline? Keep on, folks. You will.

Global warming is another hot topic. Of course, the uber-rich who are currently running America don't want to 'believe' in it despite all the evidence. It would make them have to make changes in their companies that would cut into their profits, and of course if you only make 9 million a year instead of 10, you've got quite a hardship. Mercy, how does anyone live on that? Poor souls. And who cares about dead polar bears anyway? Can't make a profit on them. So on we go, melting the ice caps, until sooner or later low-lying coastline cities will be inundated. Oh, you bet they can make a profit on that. Just watch.

We keep poisoning the air and water, cutting holes in the ecosystem, blissfully assured that humans can't possibly go extinct. We're immortal and perfect, we're invincible.

Hah.

And away we go

Having discovered CreateSpace and Amazon Kindle both have free, if rather generic, cover generators, I've got ahead and self-published some old pieces. Home Again, a romantic suspense, is now available as a print copy. Haven't done the ebook yet. Two sci fi novellas are now out at e-books. They are Like a Single Cell and Reb Dexter's Last Concert. If I can get enough short pieces together to fill up a book, I'll put them out in print. I can't decide what to do with three children's books - they're text for picture books, but I can't draw very well. Put them in with the 2 short stories?

My life's work doesn't look like much so far, but there's more to come. I've thrown out a lot of old crap that wasn't salvageable, and lost some pieces to assorted accidents, corrupted floppies, and dead computers. After NaNoWriMo, I've learned how to rough-draft a lot faster than I used to. Hopefully I'll be able to finish all the partial books, fragments, and ideas I've got. Whoops, sorry Sandy, there's a 'got.' You can take the girl out of Kansas, but the speech patterns are going to stick no matter what.

I want to earn enough to afford Digital Donna's magnificent work for the rest of the Phoenix trilogy. And I'd like to have it also for the Seven Kingdoms  and Grove Witches series. The first book in each series is ready to publish, and I've rough-drafted the second of the Phoenix books. I'll be rough-drafting the third one this November (NaNoWriMo).

And soon: Plague Scars.

The Children's Eyes

 

The weak ones and the wounded ones,

The ones frustration tears,

Pick helpless victims for their hate –

They make their children bear.

The children learn that love is pain,

And blows just show you care.

Even though the bruises heal,

The pain is always there;

And generations down the line,

The painful pattern grows.

Some survivors make it through –

The scars all may not show.

The twisted parents shift the blame

And tell their alibis,

The children hold their twisted love

Deep in their blackened eyes. 

In their eyes you see the future,

In their eyes you see the past.

In their eyes you’ll see how well we’ve done –

We’ve made the evil last

In the children’s eyes. 

For boundaries only in our minds,

For dogmas soon forgot,

For cold ambitious power plays:

The wars just never stop.

And from the rubble watch them come –

Survive’s too strong a word.

And though some of them live to grow,

They can’t outgrow the hurt.

The legacy of hate we’ve left –

We’ve taught them all we know,

And generations down the line,

The violence just grows.

From Ireland to Vietnam

The whole world’s heard their cries:

The price of war’s not cities, friend,

It’s in the children’s eyes.

In their eyes you see the future,

In their eyes you see the past.

In their eyes you’ll see how well we’ve done –

We’ve made the evil last

In the children’s eyes.

 

 

What I really want for Christmas

What do I want for Christmas? My mom asks this every year. This year, I honestly don’t know. Short of giving her a list of books and DVDs, there’s not much that I want that can actually be put in a box and wrapped up.

I want my husband’s health back. The medicines he has to take for his constant pain make him a different person. I miss the old him.

I want a place to live in a better part of town, and preferably over 1000 square feet.

I want our car paid off. It costs us nearly as much a month as our rent.

I want to be able to sell or self-publish the other four finished novels I’ve written.

I want the 20 pounds I’ve gained to GO AWAY.

I want my hairline back where it was.

I want to be able to pay all our bills each month without juggling.

I want energy.

I want my cats to stop pooping outside the box, and if they’d bury the poop they actually do in the box, it’d be lovely.

That’s my real Christmas list.

Wanderlust

The urge to move is itching me,
The highway sings a song.
I’ve got the wanderlust so bad
My whole life just looks wrong,
But deep inside my soul I know
To go won’t change a thing.
My enemy’s inside my brain
And that’s the real sting.
‘Cause you can run around the world,
No matter what you find,
And even at the speed of light
You’re trapped inside your mind.
But still I’m full of wanderlust –
The far hills look so green,
And maybe in another place
The people won’t be mean.
The highway sings its siren song,
The only words I trust:
I won’t return if I give in
Just once to wanderlust.

Sometimes I’ll just be glancing round
To see what’s there to see;
My eyes will fix upon a man
And unexpectedly
The sight gives me a hot, sharp pang
That hits and moves straight down.
It seems to make no difference if
His hair's red, gold, or brown.
Can’t really say what catches me,
The way he moves perhaps,
Or humor in a pair of eyes
That sparkle when he laughs.
Intelligence gets to me, too –
The dumb ones make me yawn.
Yes, strength is sexy, goodness knows,
But humor beats out brawn.
These crushes never last too long,
They singe me then they fade.
My lust has wandered near and far
But never has it stayed.

A TALE OF THREE TOMCATS

Come little children and sit by my knee;

I’ll tell you a tale of my tomcats three.

First there is Bandit, my shy Siamee;

Then Muffin, the tiger, all orange and white;

Lastly there’s loverboy, black Starry Night.

When I got three I made one oversight.

 

If one can’t find mischief, the other two can.

They sail past my fragiles like a catamaran.

They’re making a fuzz-ball of my new divan.

Star chews my hair while he purrs oh so loud,

Bandit does yodeling while pacing around,

And Muffin picks fights with the whole naughty crowd.

 

Bandit sheds cream on the dark brown stuffed chair.

Star likes the white chair to leave his black hair.

My blazer of blue looks like orange mohair.

Yet sometimes, when Muffin curls up by my knees,

And loverboy purrs without even a please,

And soft murrows come from that loud Siamese,

I know bad things and good things both come in threes.

 

 

Written in 1981, about the three cats I had in my first apartment. They were a lot of fun and aggravation.

 

 

My cousin Rocky

My cousin Rocky is facing terminal cancer, and with his usual wry humor has started a blog titled Terminal Velocity. What he calls his ramblings could easily be collected into a book. They're very good. The situation with him breaks my heart. My handsome younger cousin, after having disfiguring surgery on his face to try to save his life, had the cancer recur before they finished reconstructing his jaw. They'll do no more reconstruction, so he'll spend this last year unable to swallow let alone eat. He's relearning how to talk. He has no teeth, a partial jaw, no salivary glands, no soft palate. When he vomits - which is often - it comes out his nose as well. Can't be helped. Has a tracheotomy.

I was glad he at least still can ride his motorcycle, though his leg is weak - evidently that's where they took the bone to remake his jaw. He has to be more careful, but can still do it. He was a classic extrovert. Lived his life to the hilt with no regrets and beholden to no one.

What brought him down? Smoking.

After my Dad died of the side effects of smoking, I wanted to hire a plane and bomb all tobacco farms out of existence. Now, I look at young people smoking and want to slap them. Dad started before the tobacco companies admitted their product was poisonous. Now we all know. So why do people start smoking? It makes you stink, it makes you wrinkle young, it damages your health and might even kill you. Oooh, hold me back.

A lot are going with those electronic cigarettes in the mistaken notion that they're safer. Yeah, just like tanning beds are 'safer' than the sun. Tanning beds still give you melanoma, and electronic cigarettes are still dispensing poisons, toxins, and carcinogens deep into your body. The only safe suntan is a spray-on tan, and the only safe cigarette is a candy one.

To those who say, well, you've got to die of something, I say, But why pick that? It takes ages, it's expensive, and chemo, radiation, and surgery are very bad experiences. Painful, sickening, horrendous experiences that take away parts of your life you loved.

Rocky, age 18.

                                                Rocky, age 51, after smoking for decades.

Is this really the death you would choose? Because you can choose not to.